DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms | TechCrunch
without stupid adblockblock https://archive.is/whZuI
also i wouldn't install their extension just for that, you can edit your default search engine to anu address you want in the settings
browser extensions are a huge privacy risk and i wouldn't trust ddg with my data because of their Microsoft deal, not to block their trackers (they reverted that part after the backlash) in the ddg browser and to only show msn under their news tab in regular ddg
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/01/duckduckgo-makes-its-no-ai-search-engine-easier-to-access-as-its-traffic-booms/Open linkView original on lemmy.blahaj.zone788
Comments71
would be great if it could also not show links to ai generated content websites
Combo it with Ublock Origin and use their AI site blocklist.
I didn't see a list like that in the Ublock Origin settings. Is it an importable list and do you have a link?
It's built in the filters list, under Annoyances>Huge AI Blocklist. There's two different ones (the larger "nuclear variant" might slow down search a bit).
Sorry, I'm still not seeing it. Firefox says uBO is already updated.
Here's the direct home link, although it's built into the list on my Waterfox and IronWolf installs.
Thanks.
Maybe that's why. I use Zen. Perhaps Waterfox and IronWolf already have uBO installed by default and added that AI block list?
Thank you. It wasn't there for me on regular Firefox + uBlock extension, but I got it now.
The fact that this is even necessary just makes me sad.
DuckDuckGo actually tries to downrank them. It's just that there's no way ts tell for sure, especially for computers.
It really sucks that to escape Google, the second in line that is "more private" is DDG and based in the US. So that means they have to abide to the american privacy invading "patriot" laws etc.
I wish we had a good European alternative that doesn't have to comply to the NSA when they want direct access to logs while giving you a gag order...
And I know searx-ng but last time I tried it wasn't good enough imo.
Qwant is French. Not a privacy search engine and looks like it features AI now. Kagi is really good, but US based and expensive. I think most of Europe does intelligence sharing with the US ("14 eyes" or something like that)?
Yeah I used Qwant for 2/3 years. It wasn't really good either. I was constantly calling google through Qwant so it became pointless.
I think Switzerland would probably be a good place to host a search engine.
why are you thinking switzerland?
If I recall correctly they have strong privacy laws and the fact that they are not part of the EU can also help with some extra sovereignty I guess.
It's also where protonmail is hosted.
Proton are building a walled garden though. Trying to export and migrate from it is hell. I much rather have common imap/smtp and setting up pgp keys myself. That way I can easily import my local backup to a new provider if the need rises.
Proton is using that as a marketing gimmick. Swiss banking secrecy laws have absolutely nothing to do with user privacy outside of that.
Proton has complied with and handed over user data on multiple occasions.
Yes there is encryption and they can't see things, but they will hand over what metadata (IP address, device info, recovery email, payment data) they have whenever a Swiss court compels them too.
Never heard of that. There is Five Eyes (US, UK, Aus, NZ, Canada)
Its a real thing.
Well, TIL, cheers
There is ecosia, although they also use the US indexes
French Qwant and German Ecosia are building a EU based index together, but it will probably take time to be competitive compared to Google. https://www.eu-searchperspective.com/
Most of the European continent doesn't even require a judicial finding to turn over information to a Five Eyes agency.
My only gripe is its not default. I use many different devices and to set it on each one is annoying.
Agreed, let me opt in, dont force me to opt out, especially on something that costs them money. Like what?
I find that "no AI" DDG still has way more AI-generated images than default Google, sadly. And there's no
before:operator as an alternative to filter them out, either.I still go to Google for image search unfortunately.
you can go even further with the duck. https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/
Having trouble adding this as the default search in Firefox.
Anybody know the search query needed to use this from the address bar?
https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/q=%s
Does not seem to work.
It uses a Form Post - I recommend navigating to the DDG Lite site, right click on your search bar (you might have to add it if you removed it by using "Costumize Toolbar"), and select to add it. Edit: just realized ithis also works in the address bar, no fiddling around needed. Edit2: But it does not work consistently - the search bar variant always works.
for even more easier easy lazy access: https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
What makes me suspect them having an agenda behind all their self-marketing is the fact that this isn't already the default page...
Yeah, what's with the auto-opt-in for features that cost them money? I'd think they'd prefer if nobody used the AI search, because they'd get their ad impressions with only server overhead, rather than that plus AI overhead. Clearly I'm wrong, but I can't figure out why.
It must mean they actually are logging our searches.
Or if your job wipes your browser preferences for whatever misguided security each time it closes and you end up on the default AI BS page at the start of each day.
I switched to MetaGer long ago. No AI bullshit, no trackers, no ads, you pay a pittance per search to cover the costs of your search. I started using it 8 months ago and i still haven't used up the 10€ i charged my account with. They are run by a non-profit, and it's FOSS under AGPL3.
Does it work as well as Google before it became absolute shit?
Per default it uses Brave's index, Mojeek's index and Google's Index via Serper. You can switch off whatever index you do not want. It also respects quotes and +/- in searches. There are no sponsored search results. You can open pages using their anonymous proxy when clicking "Open Anonymously". This is a Screenshot of a search using Brave and Google's Index.
Oh, i thought they had their own index, then i guess that a local SearXNG instance with a proxy will do...
They don't have their own index, but they implement a whole lot of other indexes (Scopia, Yahoo, Bing, Wikis, YaCy, Netluchs, Exalead, Yandex, Die ZEIT, OneNewspage, Infotiger). The 3 big indexes are the ones that charge metager for providing search results, and those costs are what you pay for, and since it's a non-profit (https://suma-ev.de/), the costs are close to what you would pay if you had access to API pricing.
DuckDuckGo gains traffic not because it somehow gotten better recently.
Google entered heavy enshittification stage and honestly... it's sad to watch.
google has been in heavy enshittification for going on a decade now.
Honestly you could make the argument that its been on the enshittification slide since they tried to expand out from just being a search engine company.
Sometime around 2018 when they removed "dont be evil" from their company charter.
I honestly can't find anything on google anymore. I barely use it at all, but sometimes someone will hand me their phone, so I'll give it a shot. I always end up switching to ddg before I find what I'm looking for.
There might be a way to use google search these days but its apparently beyond my desire/skills to learn it.
There is a good article about how it happened: The Man Who Killed Google Search by Ed Zitron
There are also lite and html versions:
Neither has AI enabled.
Qwant and Kagi are also pretty solid search engines if people are looking for more alternatives.
Why have an extension for this?
On Firefox (desktop and mobile) you can easily add it as your default search engine. It can be done in Vivaldi too (not sure if its a chrome default or Vivaldi addition).
They could just have a 1 paragraph guide telling you how to do it.
yeah that's what I'm saying
...yes, I definitely read your entire post and repeated exactly what you said for fun.
Well shit
So don't click it then?
Oh yeah, sounds like what they said before other search engines went to shit. Its right there.
Yeah you should probably look into their recent history before you say things like that.
I guess the AI results that only started popping up recently on my duckduckgo are just my lack of skill. And no, I don't care to change settings at this time I am still using duckduckgo for my search engine. Just stop with the product bullshit, there is clearly AI used at duckduckgo at an ever increasing rate.
Nope. I don't get any AI results and I've changed no settings. They used to be AI in DuckDuckGo everyone complained about it and they took it out. And this is using a VPN set to Canada so it should be the same results as you're getting. If I want AI have to click the assistive search button in the top right. Which I can see clearly is highlighted in your screenshot meaning you probably clicked it at some point and you need to unclick it.
https://duckduckgo.com/settings#aifeatures
Have fun!
Note: These settings are stored in your cookies and if you clear those, the settings will reset. That's why we have https://noai.duckduckgo.com/.
If you are really that bothered by it:
OR use SearXNG.
I mean they're complaining about the existence of a feature which despite their insistence to the country is in fact not enabled by default.
Searxng, a metasearch engine, and better, self hosted in a container. Easy, searches a stupid amount of engines, 100% private.
I'm sure the search engines log the IP, and with enough searches could be correlated back to you fairly easily even if you host it on a VPS? Unless it does some kind of mitigation I'm unaware of.
or "Degoog", which is an alternative that works pretty good as well: https://degoog.org/
Not seeing any adblockblock, do you have all of the annoyances filters enabled in uBO?
I have found duck to be slow in general lately for some reason, has anyone tried waterfox search for private serach?
Yeah same here. The results are still good though
Edit: and no I haven’t tried that
I've noticed that ddg is now way slower than a couple of weeks ago...
Brave Search is really good too and you can also turn off the AI search aspect.
Sorry buddy, you ain't getting no respect for anything Brave
Brave does a lot of great things, actually.
I work in anti-fraud and it's really the only browser that at least tries to resist fingerprinting. Every other browser either refuses to protect its users (Chrome, Firefox) or has no market share to contest against privacy invasion (i.e. you'll get infinite captchas) so Brave is doing a lot of good things despite the problematic relationship with crypto.
You can also get Brave Origin which has all the crypto and AI stuff removed.
That being said even Brave didn't have enough mass to fully protect against fingerprinting and sadly removed their "strict mode" year or two ago due to constant cloudflare/captcha breaks. The standard mode is still lightyears ahead of chrome and firefox though.
LibreWolf seems to be pretty obsessed about privacy, is non-chromium, originates from Europe and is FOSS.
I'd say it's pretty competitive
LibreWolf is great!
When I said competitive I meant in sense of mass of users. It's easy to ignore 10 LibreWolf users who can't connect to your website due to Cloudflare spyware but much harder to ignore 10,000 Brave users.